by B.L.in Other0 comments
“We better unite because this is how we stand,” Dan Rather said on AM Joy on November 11, 2017. He was speaking about Americans and how tribal and divisive they have become about major issues such as racism, sexism, the presidency, the economy, and healthcare. I didn’t understand exactly what he meant until I thought about it. Or maybe it was after Hurricane Harvey pounded the news media that brought Rather’s words to my mind again. I’m not speaking about the horrendous storm that damaged Florida and Texas and avoided Puerto Rico, which got hammered and then steamrolled by another type of malignant neglect. But that’s a story for another day. The hurricane I meant was Harvey Weinstein the accused alleged sexual predator haunting young women with dreams of would-be stardom. That hurricane led the other hurricanes: Alabama senatorial candidate Judge Roy Moore, who I’ll focus on. There are also accusers for actor Kevin Spacey, Senator Franken, media talking-heads Charlie Rose and Mark Halperin, Congressman John Conyers, and New York Times journalist Glen Thrush. Let’s not forget the man in the big house, who wasn’t punished for his role in assaulting women like Bill Cosby was, but rather he was […]

by B.L.in Latest Novels, Other0 comments
Ever wonder how the longest relationship in the Forever Woman Series happened? Read about Vivian Johnson and Pat Davis in the 6th volume of the series. The Bookstore, fifteen years of love and counting tells the tale of somewhat wild and raunchy playgirl Vivian Johnson, who is also Leah Williams’ (Forever Woman and Sweet Sarah’s Bluez) editor and good friend. Fifteen years ago, while working on one of her client’s book tours, she meets an interesting younger woman. Patricia Davis has just opened a women’s bookstore on a shoestring budget. Vivian is impressed that such a young woman from Generation X would bet her entire future on opening a woman’s bookstore and community center in the heart of a low-income neighborhood. They bump heads at first. Vivian’s client, Melba Farris (Mr. Jefferson’s Piano and Other Central Harlem Stories), asks her to set up a book signing in the bookstore, but Pat’s womanizing partner, Etta, wants more than a book signing from Vivian. The two partners argue about Vivian, causing Pat to say things to Vivian that she has to apologize for later. The book signing is exceptionally successful, but the two women decide not to see each other again. As […]

by B.L.in Other0 comments
When my characters speak to me, I do try to listen. During the writing of my second and third books in a series, Two Moons Bakery and Sweet Sarah’s Bluez, I’d created secondary characters that spoke to me. I felt they deserved stories of their own. For years, actually since 1999, I felt these secondary characters deserved their own storylines, but I just never sat down and wrote backstories for them. At the time, I felt writing their stories would be going backwards in my writing. I always wanted to go forward with other newer, what I deemed more interesting, stories, so I cast these storylines aside. This fall and winter, I spent a great of time in my old home state of Ohio. It was time away from my adopted home in the Big Apple that I hadn’t anticipated spending. My mother had a medical emergency that scared the crap out of me and my three siblings and their respective partners. Since I was no longer working and I could stay with my mother through her medical crisis, that’s what I did. For the next three and half months from October of last year until January of this year, […]

by B.L.in Other0 comments
When I first arrived in New York during the summer of 1968, my mother was afraid for me. She worried that her wild child, meaning me, would go crazy in the Big Apple. We had this agreement. When I turned 18, I wanted to join the Peace Corps or the domestic peace corps called VISTA. Before that, at 16 or 17, I wanted to join the Freedom Rides going on in the Deep South. My parents said no, citing either my need for higher education or my lack of temper control. I tried to make an end run around all of their negativity by asking if I could go the University of California’s Berkley campus. That way, I’d meet their higher education rules, but I’d also be able to join all kinds of anti-war and civil rights demonstrations on the campus. Of course, my parents knew that too. At 18, I thought I knew more than they did about current events. I was wrong. My parents said no, then we argued. They finally said, Try college at our alma mater, Ohio State University, for two years. If after two years you want to do something else, we’ll support you. Fast […]

by B.L.in Other0 comments
As a kid, my mother would take me and my siblings shopping for clothes in local department stores. Anything my mother, a home economist and a bit of a tailor, couldn’t make for us, she’d buy when we had the money. I remember how excited my mother was when women were allowed to have store charge cards linked to their husband’s money. My mother’s first store charge card resembled an army dog tag. It was rectangular, made of metal, and smaller than the plastic encrypted credit cards of today. Hers had an assigned number. Her card also contained her first and last names along with her address, stamped into the metal face of the card. Whenever my mother used the card to pay for something, a salesclerk stuck it into a small manual charge machine face up. Then the clerk placed a small, rectangular, handwritten paper invoice with triple carbon layers on top of the charge card. She slid a roller-like attachment over the invoice and the card so my mother’s information would appear on the invoice. The salesclerks were always white women (back then, the sales staff wasn’t integrated) and usually a great deal younger than my mother. When […]

by B.L.in Latest Novels0 comments
It’s been three years since the main characters from Two Moons Bakery (TMB) met and fell in love or broke up. This story follows secondary characters first introduced in Two Moons Bakery, Sweet Sarah’s Bluez, and Forever Woman, chronicling how they converge or diverge at another central meeting place known as Ferrelli’s Restaurant. The restaurant is owned by Maria Ferrelli, a single widowed lesbian who is trying to keep her struggling family restaurant afloat. Dr. Leah Williams (SWEET SARAH’S BLUEZ) is 45-year-old English professor who has been unlucky in love and is dissatisfied in her career. She is in therapy, but is uncooperative and resistant, which may jeopardize her job at Metro U. Maria Ferrelli (FOREVER WOMAN) is 47-year old owner of a small Italian restaurant downtown in NoHo. She has a staff full of misfits who are also related to her through blood or marriage. Her restaurant was the talk of the town when it opened years ago, but now seems to be losing money. Can the two women overcome their rocky first meeting to explore common interests and a mutual attraction at Ferrelli’s Restaurant? Ferrelli’s Restaurant, love never comes a third time is available for pre-order 10/25/17 on […]

by B.L.in Other0 comments
Sports have been the place to make the biggest statements about the myth of group supremacy and the hope for social equality, writes Sims [Take a Knee, by John Sims/Wilson Palacio, 2017] Colin Kaepernick (7) and Eric Reid (35) were the forefathers of the recent protest movement of taking a knee during the national anthem. (Mike McCarn/AP). Originally published September 22, 2016 at 8:57 pm in The Seattle Times. This is short essay is not about celebrating the national anthem not is it about whether kneeling is patriotic or not. Taking a knee is about no longer standing for violating Black folks’ right to life in these United States. In addition to not being killed for your beliefs or your race or gender, these rights include: The right to free speech which means the right to protest. The right to protest includes the freedom to “take a knee” during the national anthem or at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier without penalty such as job loss or loss of life. As Carol Hanisch said in an 1969 essay she wrote and was published in 1970, “The Personal Is Political.” The essay and others that followed, made the connection between everyday […]

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You are in a deep funk. You are so depressed you nearly quit your living. You convince yourself that you have good reason for your depression. Your family is gone. Both of your boys, twin sons, died in a bus accident nearly a year ago. You took family leave after the funeral. Now it’s time for you to return to work. You decide to remove all reminders of your children by selling their furniture and personal items through the want ads and internet. A charming woman, a stranger, offers to buy the beds and desks. She comes to your house to see the youth beds for sale. She senses something is wrong with you, but she doesn’t pry. She seems decent. She makes you laugh for the first time in a long, dark time. She takes pity on you and cooks the first hot meal you’ve had in months. One thing leads to another the two of you end up in bed together. The sex is extraordinary, but you know it’s a once-in-a-lifetime meeting. You’ll never see her again no matter how much you want it. Ha! Fate kicks you in the butt. Come Monday morning, guess who your new […]

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I wasn’t going to write about this. It was too scary for me to contemplate but every time I took the subway, I saw her desperate face so I had to put fingers to keyboard and punch out this story. I’d left work near the Brooklyn Bridge as usual and caught a west-side train at Chambers Street. I like to walk so I strolled through the park at City Hall with its magnificent fountain and old-fashioned faux gas lighting, crossed several streets and headed west on Chambers Street. I could take the express train uptown to upper Harlem, renamed Hamilton Heights but I like to wound down before I get home and shake off the day’s events so I caught the Number One Local. The ride was slower than usual but I didn’t mind, catching the Number One that far downtown usually yields a seat. I had a good book to read and seat at the train’s door so I was happy. At 50th Street and Broadway, the train lurched to a stop. The doors opened but we sat there until an announcement came over the PA about traffic on the line. The dispatcher was holding us in the station. […]

by B.L.in Other0 comments
So I get this early morning phone call from my kid. “Hi, Mom.” “Why are you calling me at two in the morning?” I say. I think, Early morning calls are never good news. It’s how I learned of my father’s death. “Don’t get mad, Mom; I was in an accident.” “What kind of accident? How serious was it? Are you hurt?” I pause breathing heavily, waiting anxiously for an answer. I’m hoping my son can’t be hurt too badly if he can still talk to me. I hear him sigh, take a deep breath, and then he tells me. “I think I broke my ankle. I fell asleep driving across the 59th Street Bridge.” I hear the piercing wail of sirens in the background as my son talks to me. An unfamiliar voice interrupts my son and says, “The ambulance is here to take your son to the hospital.” “Could you please find out what hospital?” “Where are they taking him?” the stranger asks. The ambulance driver says, “St. Clare Hospital on 54th Street and 10th Avenue. The stranger introduces himself. He tells me that he happened on my son’s accident and helped break the windshield to pull him […]